Elizabeth Economy is a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, an expert on Chinese politics and foreign policy, and was a senior adviser on China at the US Department of Commerce. Her most recent book is The World According to China. This interview first appeared in SCMP Plus. For other interviews in the Open Questions series, click here.
Joe Biden’s administration has launched policies on semiconductors such as the Chips and Science Act, expanding export controls and forming new partnerships. How effective has this strategy been?
The Chips and Science Act is about ensuring that the United States is not overly dependent on any one source, namely Taiwan, for such a critical technology, and about ensuring that the United States can remain competitive, not only as an innovator but also as a manufacturer. So at the heart of the Chips and Science Act is bringing back advanced manufacturing to the United States, and ensuring US competitiveness and supply chain resilience.
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The US government is investing US$39 billion into manufacturing, and an additional US$13 billion into R&D, but it has attracted over US$400 billion in private sector investment into manufacturing as a result of the Chips and Science Act. It’s moving at an incredibly aggressive pace, and I would say that has been quite successful to date.
In terms of export controls, those are really directed at chips and equipment that the United States believes can be used for military applications that would undermine US national security.
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I don’t think that we have seen a full study of the efficacy of export controls. My preliminary assessment based on what I’ve read is that the export controls are having mixed success. But I think that more work needs to be done to assess the real implications or the ramifications of the export controls.
US Senate passes Chips and Science Act to compete with China’s semiconductor industry
So it might be a little too early to tell?